Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [41]
Chapter 9
A Royal Wedding
In August 1992 I was a battalion commander of the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment. We had been carrying out field exercises and my men and I had been camped out in the desert for two months straight, sleeping in tents. Our accommodations were pretty basic. To take a hot shower, I had rigged up a contraption with a storage tank that heated the water using the sun. The exercises went well, so the brigade commander told me and the other officers to take the night off.
I changed out of my army uniform, threw on a T-shirt and sneakers, and drove to Amman. I had just arrived home when my sister Aisha called, saying, “I hear you’re in town, come over for dinner.” I told her I really just wanted a proper shower and a comfy bed, but she had not seen me in some time and promised the get-together was not going to be anything fancy. I had been living on beans and tinned spaghetti for the last two months, so the prospect of a real dinner was too good to turn down.
I headed over to Aisha’s house, my face like a lobster from weeks under the desert sun. Not realizing she was having guests over, I was still wearing the same clothes I had tossed on at the army camp. One of my sister’s friends worked at Apple Computer in Amman, and he had brought along a colleague, Rania Al Yassin. As soon as I saw her, I thought, “Wow!”
Nearly twenty-two at the time, Rania had not been in Jordan for long. She came from a Jordanian family of Palestinian origin and had grown up in Kuwait. She and her family had moved to Jordan during the Gulf War. Her father had long planned to retire in Jordan and had built a house in Amman, but the war sped up the family’s plans.
After studying business at the American University in Cairo, Rania had worked at Citibank in Amman, and then at Apple, where she met my sister’s friend. We spoke only briefly at the dinner, but I was struck by how poised, elegant, and intelligent she was. I was smitten and knew I had to see her again. It took me a little while to track her down, but I finally managed to get her number, and I called her at work. I introduced myself and said that I was hoping to see her again. “I’ve heard things about you,” she said. She did not finish the sentence, but the implication was that what she had heard was not entirely favorable. “I’m no angel,” I replied, “but at least half the things you hear are just idle gossip.” She was not convinced and said she would need to think about it.
I would not be so easily dissuaded. I got a mutual friend, Tawfiq Kawar, to stop by her office and assure her of my good intentions. Rania was still not convinced; she thought he was not objective. Tawfiq returned from his mission saying that he had not secured a date for me, but he had found out that Rania liked chocolate. So I sent him back bearing a box of Belgian chocolates. After that, she accepted my invitation to dinner. It was November by the time she came to my house, and I decided to surprise her and cook.
I first learned to cook out of necessity in the army, but later I came to enjoy it. I find it a great way to relax and unwind. I had a Japanese teppanyaki table made locally, and an iron griddle on which I prepared traditional Japanese dishes of chicken, shrimp, and beef in the style of a Benihana restaurant. The meal went well, and we saw each other once or twice more before the end of the year, and talked many more times by phone. We had to be discreet. Amman is a town that loves to gossip, and neither one of us wanted to be the source of speculation.
Just after the beginning of the new year, I met up with Gig. By then I could no longer contain my excitement. I told him that I had met an amazing woman in Amman, and I thought she was the one.
My birthday was on January 30, and I invited Rania to the celebration. My father sat himself down next to her and they began to talk. He was stunned by her intelligence, charm,